Alas, spring break is over. I am currently sitting at a small table in the bookstore waiting for my next class to begin. It hasn’t been as hard getting back into it as I thought it would be. I guess because if I weren’t in class I’d be going to work anyway, so there’s really not that much difference. I like this spot by the window because I can people watch. I was hesitant about coming over to the bookstore at first. Waiting in line for lunch at the cafe on campus, I’d decided to go eat in my car. I was veering off to the right about to descend down the steps to the garage when my feet just kept walking. “It’s a beautiful day out,” a voice whispered to me. “You should’ve sat down at one of the tables outside the cafe.” So my body took me to the black iron tables outside the bookstore. As I neared closer, a faint layering of yellow appeared on the tables. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I thought. “I’m going to get pollen on my butt!” But I went and sat down in a chair with the least amount of pollen and wondered whether there was anyone looking at me on the other side of that black, obfuscated glass I was sitting by.
So, I ate my lunch and lo and behold a girl in heels and an open trench coat walks to one of the tables near me and starts pulling out a camera and tripod. At first I thought she was going to interview someone at one of the tables, and that she was a broadcasting student, but then I heard the shutter click and she moved to the table directly across from me. “I know she’s not about take my picture,” I thought. She wasn’t, but it made me nervous. Journalism and broadcasting students will just crouch down anywhere and start snapping pictures and recording footage for their upcoming projects. I laugh at myself now at how terribly conceded it was to think she might take a picture of me. Funny how fear has a way of making us self-absorbed.
Anyway, now I’m here in the bookstore where my hands are still cold, but my butt is at least warmer from the cushioned chair. Across from me, there’s a student sitting with a woman I’m assuming is her professor. They’re discussing an assignment, and it reminds me of when my freshman year English professor liked to meet up with us at the bookstore to talk over upcoming papers. I miss that. I miss that professor. I miss feeling the way I felt freshman year. I felt more like a writer than I do now. I kept a journal in a small, brown leather book. I would sit out by the fountain in front of the library, the patio in front of my dorm, a table at the Starbucks, and just write. Write about life, my stories, God, anything. Part of me feels like I’ll lose the connection to my writing once I leave school. I think that’s why I can’t make up my mind, definitively decide on whether or not I want to go to grad school. Part of me wants freedom away from academics, but part of me is afraid to let that go just yet. I sit at work and can see myself advancing there, but I sit here at a small table in the bookstore on campus and can see myself growing here: as a writer, as a person.
That’s why I can’t choose a road to travel. I’m nearing the fork and if I don’t choose left or right soon I’ll just run into the sign and have a wreckage on my hands. I know different things work for different people. Some writers need that 9-5 office job where not all of their priorities revolve around their craft, some writers need to immerse themselves in their craft. The problem that gets between myself and my ability to make a decision is that I don’t know which person I am. I don’t know what kind of writer I am. You’d think after four years of college I’d have this figured out, but I most definitely do not. The only thing I can say is that, while I don’t now where I’m going, God does. I find comfort in that. He’ll somehow let me know which road He wants me to take.
This is all of course contingent upon my getting into grad school. If I don’t, there’s nothing to talk about unless I apply somewhere else. Even still, God will tell me in His own time. The only thing I can do until then is to simply write; my story, in my journal, on my blog, to my friends. I’ll write and revise, write and revise. It doesn’t always have to be about work. My writing is for me, it’s a solace and an adventure. It’s something I do to glorify God. It’ll get to where it needs to go. Until then, I just keep writing.
